SAN ANGELO, Texas - Gov. Rick Perry, apparently running for president again, went to New Orleans Saturday to talk to a RedState blogging group — to whom he’d announced in 2011 his last presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, to out-conservative other Republican hopefuls, he wants bragging rights for tight-fistedness.

Perry is telling legislators to fix transportation, not with logical methods such as raising the motor fuels tax or larger fees on heavy trucks.

The gas tax was last hiked a nickel in 1991, to 20 cents a gallon. It would have to be 34.3 cents a gallon today to have the same buying power. Meanwhile, cars get many more miles per gallon.

So solve a money problem, Perry says, without new taxes or fees.

Perry’s feigned conservatism has forced legislators to rely on toll roads or highway bonds — far more expensive over time.

“I’m frustrated,” said Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, “because we’ve been given marching orders and rules that prevent us from actually fixing the problem.”

Phil Wilson, executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, says $4 billion more is needed to just stay even with highway needs.

This guy is no spend-crazy bureaucrat. After a decade on the staff of former Republican U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, he was on Perry’s staff for years. As deputy chief of staff, Wilson oversaw the governor’s initiatives on economic development and job creation. Perry appointed him Texas secretary of state in 2007.

So while Perry runs around the country telling businesses to come to Texas, Wilson is pleading for more funding so they, and everyone already here, can get around.

Acting under Perry’s limitations, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, proposed diverting part of the oil and gas taxes bound for the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund, or Rainy Day Fund. It would produce just under $1 billion.

Taking money from the Rainy Day Fund requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. So Nichols wires around that by redirecting some dollars headed for the emergency fund to transportation.

But that requires a constitutional amendment — which also requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber, plus a “yes” vote from voters on Nov. 4, 2014.

The House came up with that vote in the first special session, and sent it to the Senate for final passage.

Democratic and Republican senators asked the presiding officer, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, to get the transportation bill passed before Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, began her filibuster against the measure to limit women’s choice.

But Dewhurst, hoping to appeal to anti-abortion Republican primary voters, ignored the pleas.

Davis talked for 11 hours before Dewhurst and the Republicans stretched Senate rules to shut her down a couple hours before the session’s midnight deadline. Then opponents of the anti-abortion bill literally shouted down the Senate until just after midnight, and the bill died.

During the second special session, the two-thirds House supermajority had dwindled, losing some Republicans opposed to siphoning gas tax money from the Rainy Day Fund, and Democrats worried about favoring highways funding over schools.

The measure got 84 votes in the House — 16 short of the 100 needed. House sponsor Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, declared it dead.

Usually tight-lipped House Speaker Joe Straus said the vote showed House members “increasingly uncomfortable” with shifting Rainy Day Funds.

It’s “using a Band-Aid to cover a pothole; in the end, you still have a pothole and you’ve spent a lot of money without solving the fundamental problem.

“Legislators know that Texas needs a much more comprehensive approach to funding our growing state’s growing transportation needs,” Straus said, “and another 30-day special session will not change that.”

Perry scolded the House and ignored pleas from exhausted lawmakers, in session since January, to give them a rest.

“A plan was on the table that would have taken a significant step toward improving our roads and highways using existing revenue,” Perry’s statement said. “Inaction is a Washington-style attempt to kick a can down the road — but everybody in Texas knows we’re rapidly running out of roads to kick that can down.”

He called the third special session, to begin half an hour after the second ended.

Good luck, lawmakers — getting around that rock in the road called Rick.